


the boy wonder returns

by spacepuck



Category: Homestuck
Genre: :''), M/M, davekat is only a lil mention here, dont be fooled--this is johndave haha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 03:28:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7388680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacepuck/pseuds/spacepuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You force-stop your hands from tapping away at the ground, instead picking one up to—what? Touch him? He’s close enough to touch now, not being a fickle disappearing douche, not about to run off to talk to anyone else. You reach out to him, maybe to steady him as he settles, but instead you close your hand into a waiting fist."</p>
<p>Oneshot from Dave's POV throughout pages 9363-9383.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the boy wonder returns

**Author's Note:**

> ahh so i said i wasn't going to do johndave week, but.....i had to write a lil something for [this panel](http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=009383)....:''')

True to form, you’re left a little breathless when he appears in the dark haze above the meteor, a stark smudge of blue against nothing. 

All of the fidgeting you had been distracting yourself with in waiting – tapping beats out with your fingers at your sides, rolling and unrolling the cuffs of your sleeves, pushing invisible wisps of hair back into your hairline with nerve-wracked hands – it all stops. It’s not a graceful fall from nerves to peace, though, nothing as easy as taking a breath and letting it back out like smooth rivers glossing over rocks. No; as you look up at John, still very much there, finally stagnant and not about to disappear into depths that you can’t see, your bones ache with the weight of the moment. Your core is screaming at you to move, but you’re cemented. 

Vriska ruins the silence as she yells her greetings. As he and another blue-clad person drift closer, you watch his smile build, his eyes touching briefly on everyone individually. When he reaches you for just a moment, you want to fall away. 

He raises his hand and waves briefly. “Hi everybody!”

You want to let out a breath and let your shoulders calm and shut your dumb gaping mouth, but instead words tumble from you without your discretion. They’re quiet, thoughts drifting out and away from their designated location safe inside your skull, but they fall from you nonetheless. Karkat yells out his hello to John, and suddenly the heir’s eyes are on him, and then on you, big stupid smile waiting for you to say something. 

“Wow,” you breathe.

Karkat nudges your arm with his elbow, leaning over to hiss, “Don’t just mumble to yourself you rude fuck, say hello.”

You swallow down the words, store them back up into your head. You manage an upwards nod at John.

“Hey John,” you project—voice wavering in the undertones, Jesus you hope that detail got lost in the space between you two, how uncool—“what’s up?” 

Your stomach turns into knots as his eyes crinkle under the weight of his smile. 

“Hey Dave, not much!” 

You nod, and he moves onto speaking to Karkat, and then everyone else, and as he’s introducing Roxy beside him you release a breath that makes your chest burn. Karkat’s questioning side-eye burns a hole straight into your peripherals. 

“Sup,” you try. 

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he mutters, turning his gaze to you fully. “As much as I enjoy you shutting your squawking flap for some peace and quiet, I was expecting you to do more than sulk.”

You force your shoulders to relax, and you move to lean back onto your hands. “I’m not sulking, I’m straight chilling.”

“Bullshit, you look like you need a shoulder to weep your tears into.” 

You watch Roxy barrel into Rose. You watch as John finally touches base with the pad, immediately going over to Terezi and Vriska. You watch his expressions as they waver, flickering slightly, but never fully overcoming the joy in his smile. 

“Striders don’t even cry, dude, don’t get it twisted.”

He barks a laugh, loud and unfiltered. Some eyes glance at the two of you before busying themselves again. 

“What a load of shit! You were hiding your snuffling nub into that shitty cape of yours when you showed me human _Titanic_.”

“Uh, no, that was _you_ cramming your dripping snot into my cape, buddy. You can’t project your habit of getting weepy onto me. Just because your major crush on Leo was mortally wounded when he drowned in the fucking Atlantic doesn’t mean you get to cross the threshold dividing up our emotions.”

He’s about to retort, but instead he swings his hands up in defeat, growling out an irritated sigh. “ _Anyway_ , you’re still being quiet considering the situation you’ve been placed in.” 

“And what situation is that?” 

“That _John Fucking Egbert_ finally made his long-awaited appearance.” 

You force a shrug, but your muscles feel like they’re on fire. Behind your shades, your eyes are still pinned on the boy wonder, the bright blue hood trailing behind him in a lazy stream, the wafting train of a bride walking down the aisle.

Jesus. You shift your gaze to Karkat, and his lack of retort tells you that you safely avoided saying that out loud. 

Karkat shifts a little closer, drops his voice to a softer tone. The air between you two, while stark and almost medicinal in the first place, becomes a little tense. 

“Are you two not friends anymore or something?” he asks. It makes you break your gaze from John to give Karkat a somewhat incredulous look, despite him not being able to read your eyes. 

“Nah, of course we’re still friends. Look at the dude, he’s just busy wooing all the other creatures looking for his attention.”

Karkat does spare a short gaze in John’s direction as he walks away from the Lalonde cuddle pile, then looks back at you, eyes squinted in irritation.

“Look at these bitches,” you clarify, sweeping an arm to gesture at the group, “all trying to crawl into his lap and shit, like, ‘Ooh, John, welcome to the club, we’ve missed you so much, let me kiss you—’” 

You break off to making some derisive kissing noises, at which point Karkat shoves away from you, fully exasperated. 

“Wow! And you told me not to cross over the threshold and project into _your_ emotional space! Fucking incredible, Strider.” 

“I’m not projecting, I’m just stating the obvious. Look around at all these—” 

“Thirsty fucking bitches, yeah, yeah, I know! They’re clambering all over him, obviously not preoccupied with other matters and conversations at the moment!”

“Dude, keep it down, you’ll blow our cover.”

“What the _fuck_ are you talking about? No, you know what—” He holds a hand up to you, stopping your retort. “I don’t want to hear it. Just stop being a sulking shit grub and, I don’t know…” He waves a hand around vaguely, trying the words in his mouth. “ _Try_ to be normal, in whatever small capacity that is for you.”

With that, he shuts himself off from you to control his mild dose of seething. You direct your eyes back on John, chatting with Jake, smile more subdued and gentle with the quieter of the group. You fix your position, leaning back on your hands again to watch him. 

Without Karkat in your ear, you hear John say that he’s shy, too, which makes you smile briefly, faintly. 

What a fucking liar. 

When you were kids, he had reached out to you first. He reached out first a lot of times in the beginning; you played off your lack of the same properties as being too cool to talk to dweebs like him unless prompted, but in truth, you never knew what to say. Trying to be a cool ten year old was hard. It was hard when you had to pretend that you didn’t crave the attention that the overly-talkative boy gave you without asking. It was especially hard when you had to stave off your rambling tendencies to keep up the persona that you were cooler than him. 

What a load of shit. He never cared if you were cool. He reminded you, in his own dorky and insensitive ways, time and time again, that he knew that you weren’t as cool as you had hoped to make others believe. And time and time again, it irritated you that you were practically an open book to him.

Still, you try to make your body as lax as possible despite your nerves. You try to draw your face as close to apathy that you can, not sure how to settle your brows or the corners of your mouth. You try to make yourself seem cool even though the guy doesn’t give a shit. He’ll probably see right through you. He probably saw right through you as soon as he blinked back into existence. 

But, god, what would you even do without the façade? You glance again at Roxy and Rose, still hugging fondly, chatting to each other, Roxy reaching up to touch Rose’s face and hair and gushing over her clothes. If you dropped the act, would you act like _that?_

It makes your hands fidget thinking about it. A cursory glance at Karkat reminds you that you’ve shared some less-than-cool touches between each other—settling your head on his shoulder, putting your hand over his to fuck up his handwriting, getting close on the couch to watch movies. You won’t even lie and say it was irony fueling your actions; with that said, though, you don’t know what it all was, exactly. 

You tap your fingers on the ground behind you, but the beat is scraggly and haphazard. 

The thought of being able to be physically near John for more than a few moments makes your chest burn. Like, actually burn, deep under your sternum, trickling up into your throat, and, Jesus, is John Egbert giving you acid reflux? 

You look up at him to confirm-slash-deny, and for a moment you’re startled because his eyes are already searching for yours as he nears, walking away from the obnoxiously looming Tavrosprite.

His grin is back in full swing, and, Jesus Christ, you feel your heart thudding uncomfortably under the burn. You expect him to stand by, much like he did with the others, just stand around and tower and flash his smile and eyes down on the unworthy until he’s ready to move onto his next victims, but he drops down to sit beside you instead. 

Holy shit, he’s radiating. 

You force-stop your hands from tapping away at the ground, instead picking one up to—what? Touch him? He’s close enough to touch now, not being a fickle disappearing douche, not about to run off to talk to anyone else. You reach out to him, maybe to steady him as he settles, but instead you close your hand into a waiting fist. 

He catches your eyes as well as he can, then bumps his fist against yours.

“Hi Dave!”

Without thinking, you feel yourself grant him a small smile.

“Hey, bro.” 


End file.
